Moses Levinsky awoke with a start upon his humble couch in the little hall bedroom in the sixth story of the immense and crowded tenement-house in Eldridge Street, New York City, in which he dwelt. He very much feared that he had overslept himself and would be late at the early morning service of the Congregation Sons of Peace. The light which shown through the narrow window of his room was much brighter than the pale illumination which usually greeted his early waking eyes and seemed to show that the day was further advanced. A glance at the cheap silver watch which lay upon his trousers on the chair next to his bed showed him that his apprehensions were only too well founded. The Congregation Sons of Peace invariably began its devotions at 6 A.M. Moses Levinsky was in the habit of rising at half-past five; his toilet and the walk to the little meeting-room in the next block required twenty-five minutes, and he was regularly in his place five minutes 129before the voice of the Chazan or precentor, chanting in classic Hebrew, “Exalted be the living God and praised,” betokened that the service of adoration and supplication, with which modern Israel supplies the place of the ancient sacrificial worship, had begun. But to-day the watch which usually indicated about a quarter past five when he first glanced at it in the early mornings, stood at half-past six. The congregation had already been engaged in prayer for a full half-hour, and he could hardly hope to be with them before the services, which usually lasted somewhat less than an hour, were concluded. Watches and clocks are obstinate creatures. They persist in their opinions, which can be plainly read in their faces. They care not at all how disagreeable or unpleasant their statements may be to those who consult them, and they can neither be reasoned with nor stared out of countenance. And so Moses Levinsky’s watch did not recede at all for all the hard stares which that rather confused individual directed at it; but, on the contrary, advanced a minute or so, while he, who had now risen upon his side and rested upon his left arm, gazed at it with puzzled and rueful countenance.
The truth was that Moses was in doubt as 130to the right course to pursue. His watch told him that he might as well make an exception to-day from his regular practice and stay at home, for he could never hope to be on time at the services, or even present during any considerable portion of them. On the other hand, his conscience smote him greatly at having overslept himself; and thus incurred the danger of breaking his life rule, of always beginning the day in the house of God, and in the words which the ship captain once addressed to the prophet Jonah when he had gone to sleep in the midst of all the turmoil of the storm, it called to him, “What aileth thee, O sleeper? Arise, cry out unto thy God.” After a minute’s hesitation conscience won the battle over comfort. Moses hastily sprang from his couch, made his simple toilet as speedily as possible, and in something less than twenty minutes was on his way to the little synagogue (“place of prayer” was the unassuming name which the worshippers themselves gave it) of the Congregation of the Sons of Peace. While he is on his way thither, we will take occasion to describe him to our readers; for many of them, no doubt, are at a loss to understand what kind of a person he is, and particularly fail to comprehend why he should be so dreadfully put out at the mere possibility of being absent from prayers one morning, a thing which, I am sure, would never disturb the majority of my worthy readers in their mental tranquillity.
 
HE WAS NOTHING BUT A COMMONPLACE, EVERY-DAY PEDDLER
 
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131Moses Levinsky was a very ordinary and insignificant individual, such as you might pass a thousand times in the street and never pay any attention to. He was nothing but a commonplace, every-day peddler who wandered from morning to evening through the streets of the great metropolis, with a huge basket suspended in front of him, filled to overflowing with a miscellaneous assortment of goods—suspenders, shoe laces, pins, needles, tape, handkerchiefs, stockings, and what not—and endeavored to induce his fellow-beings to purchase sufficient of his store to provide him with a meagre livelihood. He had straight and regular features, of a rather handsome Semitic type, though worn and furrowed, not so much by years—he was only forty-three—as by care and anxiety; his hair and large irregular beard were black, heavily streaked with gray, and his clothes and close-fitting derby hat were decidedly shabby. All in all, he was not an imposing figure; and when we add to the unimpressiveness of his exterior the fact that he had a nervous, deprecatory manner, and looked around him with timid, 132apprehensive eyes, and also that he was a very indifferent master of the vernacular, which he spoke hesitatingly and with a pronounced Slavonic-Jewish accent, the reader will at once realize that he was of the type which low comedians love to caricature and street urchins to mock at, if not to treat worse.
But his external appearance was no indicator, except for those who are accustomed to read and understand such exteriors, of his internal characteristics. Beneath the unprepossessing outward semblance there dwelt a keen intellect and a noble soul which might well deserve the admiration of the discerning. He had received a good education of its kind in his youth in his Russian home. He had been thoroughly trained in Hebrew, had read the entire Bible in the original, and was well acquainted with the Talmud and the modern Hebrew literature from which he had derived correct ideas of the world and the development of modern science. But he had not been able to utilize his training either in his native land or America. In Russia he had desired to become a rabbi, for which his learning and his sincere religious bent amply fitted him; but all the positions he knew of were filled, and so after a few years’ vain waiting he kissed his wife and his two little ones good-by 133(he had married early while still a student at the Yeshibah) and set sail for America, where, he thought, congregations without number were ready to greet him as their spiritual chief. But a brief glance at the conditions surrounding the rabbinate among his immigrant brethren under the Western skies had cured him of his desire to make it his vocation. As he had neither capital nor sufficient secular training to enable him to become a merchant, or secure a remunerative commercial position, he had only the choice between two ways of gaining a livelihood. He could become a workman in a sweat-shop or a peddler. He chose the latter and, at the time this story begins, had pursued the occupation of itinerant merchant, an occupation in which there is little gain and less glory, for some ten years. During all these years he had permitted himself only one form of pleasure, attendance at the House of God. The theatre knew him not, the interior of saloons saw him only when on business bent; but at the synagogue he was a regular attendant, never missing the early morning services or the evening gatherings, in which the rabbi expounded the Talmud and its commentaries to a group of attentive “learners.”
Apart from his natural piety it had gradually become a matter of pride with him to be regular 134and punctual in his attendance at the synagogue, and consequently he felt considerably mortified when on the morning of our tale he found that he must either be absent or late at service. On his way to the house of worship he tried to console himself with the sneaking hope that perhaps his watch was fast and that the hour was not really as late as it indicated. But his hopes were doomed to disappointment. As he entered the little synagogue the mourners were just repeating the last Kaddish, and most of the other worshippers were folding and putting away their Tallithoth and Tephillin, preparatory to leaving for the work of the day.
Poor Moses! A pang went through his heart at the thought that he, whose punctuality and zeal had become proverbial, should be so culpably remiss as to appear in Shool when services were practically over, and a keener pang yet p............